Tag Archives: wish list

I’ve spent a lot of time judging the announcements that have been made regarding Cataclysm. This got me thinking of what kind of changes I think would improve the game. I know that none of these things are likely to happen, but a girl can dream. If it were up to me, these are the raid-related changes I’d like to see:

Go back to the BC model of raiding.For me, Burning Crusade was the best raiding experience I’ve had, and I’d like to see raiding in Cataclysm go back to this model. There are 10-man raids and there are 25-man raids. There is no overlap, there are no hard modes. I liked having variety in raids. I mainly raided 25s but it was nice to go into Kara or ZA for a breath of fresh raiding air. No double lockouts, definitely no quadruple lockouts for the same damn instance. That’s just design laziness, and it gets tedious really quick.

Get rid of EmblemsI hate Emblems. I hate being told I need to run old, easy heroics every day in order to get access to the best gear as fast as possible. I also hate that the gear available from emblems have ruined any sense of raid progression in the game. Hit level 80, go straight into ICC. Honestly, what’s wrong with making people progress? Why the need to hand out epics like candy so that no one feels left out or behind? In BC my Horde guild was working away at the first bosses of SSC and TK while the progression guilds were in Black Temple, and you know what? That was okay. I didn’t feel left out or slighted in any way. My guild was not at that level yet and we needed to work to get there. People have been so spoiled now that no one is willing to work for progress anymore – everyone expects to have everything handed to them regardless of skill or the amount of effort they put in.

Some people may call this view elitist. The changes I want do not stem from a desire to be a special snowflake. I just don’t understand why it’s so important that everyone have equal access to every thing in the game. I see no problem in rewarding people for being willing to put in more time, and for being skilled. In what skewed world view is rewarding people for effort considered a bad thing? For instance, I’m not good at PVP. I do the occasional BG and have tried arenas with very limited success. Do I think that the PVP game should be dumbed down for my benefit or that I should be handed the best PVP gear without having the skill or putting in the necessary effort to get it? Hell no. I suck at PVP, therefore I don’t get the rewards that come from it. I don’t hold a grudge against the good PVPers for this.

Do a total gear resetThe stats on gear are getting out of hand, and based on what we’ve seen stats are going to get a lot higher in Cata (especially stamina). Do we really need each piece of gear to have 500 stamina? This isn’t a huge deal, but I think the numbers are getting obscenely large. I’d like to see Blizzard reduce all stats on gear by 50 or 75% so we can start fresh and the numbers don’t get too big.

Break all boss modsDBM, Bigwigs, Deus Vox Encounters- break’em all in Cataclysm! (And break AVR immediately if not sooner). Boss mods encourage lazy, inattentive raiding. Do we really need sirens, raid warnings, flashing lights and circles on the ground in order to not die? I say no. I would enjoy having to actually watch the fight and react accordingly rather than be told what to do by a mod (at least I think I would – boss encounter mods have been a mandatory thing for most of my raiding career).

To make up for the loss of boss mods, some changes could be made to encounters. For one, bosses could have more verbal or visual cues that let you know when big abilities are coming. Encounters could also be slightly more forgiving in terms of reaction time – not having encounters where a split second of lag will kill you would be nifty. I’d really like to see the success of a raid depend more on player skill and ability to play your class well than watching timers.

Anyone else have any completely unrealistic expectations for Cataclysm that are bound to disappoint you when they don’t happen?

It’s been a while since I posted anything on my raid’s progression, so here goes.

My Horde guild has been racking up a lot of new kills in ICC. We’ve finally managed to kill Rotface, plus got our first Valithria and Blood Princes kills in 25-man a couple weeks ago. Even more bosses in 10-man are falling over dead, we got our first Blood Queen and Putricide kills.

My Alliance guild is a little stuck at 10/12 in ICC 25. We’ve been having some attendance issues and have only been raiding one day a week for the last month or so. We manage to pack a whole lotta kills into 4 hours a week, which I think is pretty impressive, but it doesn’t leave much time to work on new bosses. Two weeks ago we got Sindragosa down to 200,000 health (that’s about 0.5%). It was heartbreaking. With the bump up to the 10% buff, she should go down easily, we just need the time to get there. Both of our 10-man groups have killed the Lich King and have started working on hard modes.

I’m starting to think the ICC buff is a little much. Five percent was a nice boost, 10% is making things significantly easier. I’m afraid that once we get up to 15% certain fight mechanics are going to start being invalidated. I don’t want to be facerolling through the content and I’m afraid that’s exactly what’s going to happen once the buff goes up any higher.

I’m getting excited about the class previews for Cataclysm. I’m usually not too interested in looking at changes that are still so far away, but that new Shaman spell, Healing Rain, has piqued my interest. I’ll probably jump on the bandwagon and post about the druid and hunter previews when they come out. There are a few things I’d like to see.

For resto druids I’d like:

A spell that rivals Healing Rain (still jealous)

An overhaul/replacement for Tranquility that will make it useful for something other than 5-mans

A tank-saving cooldown

HoTs that are intrinsically affected by haste and crit. Based on the class previews that have been posted so far, I’m fairly certain this will be included for druids.

I really hope that there is no move away from instant HoTs being our primary source of healing.

Get rid of tree form! Gaaah! If I have to stare at that ugly model for another year, I’m going to lose it. Make tree form a temporary thing (with a prettier model) which is used as a cooldown. Or just ditch it all together. Let me see the gear I worked so hard for.

For hunters:

I’d like more raid utility. This is more of a fight mechanic issue than a class issue, but I’d like to see hunters be used to crowd control or kite during raids. I’d also like to see abilities like Tranq Shot get more use rather than just spam damage buttons.

Solve the ammo problem. First of all, no more consumable ammo, make it the equivalent of an idol or totem. Having ammo with different effects would be cool too.

Give us a bigger variety of Stings. It would be nice to have to choose between Stings to use based on the fight, rather than use the same one every time.